Article published in:
Interaction Studies
Vol. 18:1 (2017) ► pp. 26–54

Carrying, caring, and conversing

Constraints on the emergence of cooperation, conformity, and language

| University of Connecticut
Social and ecological research and theory are used to elaborate and enrich two important sets of accounts of language origins. One is the interdependence and shared intentionality hypothesis (e.g., Tomasello, 2014a) of the ways in which humans became cooperative and conforming in ways that other apes did not, eventually leading to language. A second set of accounts addresses the emergence of bipedalism and its connections to language and to many other anatomical, cognitive, and social features that are distinctive in humans. Particular attention is given to the carrying and caretaking of infants. Research and theory challenging common assumptions about the role of conformity in cooperation and conversation are reviewed and integrated into these accounts. Together these varying perspectives point toward a more dialogical, dynamic, and distributed understanding of social interactions and the values that motivate and constrain humans’ social and linguistic skills.
Keywords: bipedalism, caring, carrying, cooperation, conformity, divergence, language evolution, social learning, values
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The evolution of interdependence
  • 3.Walking, carrying, caring, and dialogical arrays
  • 4.Diverging, converging, and the complexity of social learning
  • 5.A dialogical, values-realizing approach to social interaction and language
  • Acknowledgements
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 10 August 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.18.1.02hod
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Carrying, caring, and conversing
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